“General Electric Co.’s finance arm moved quickly on its plan to get into online banking, announcing plans to buy insurer MetLife Inc.’s U.S. retail deposit business.
The acquisition, announced Tuesday, will bring GE Capital $7.5 billion in deposits and MetLife’s online banking platform, which could speed GE’s efforts to attract more individual savers. Terms of the deal, which will boost GE Capital’s existing U.S. deposit base of $23 billion by about a third, weren’t disclosed.
GE Capital said earlier this month that it will launch an online banking platform to attract more retail deposits. GE’s lending business is bigger than all but seven U.S. banks, but its so-called wholesale-funding model means it has to regularly go to the markets to raise the money it uses to make loans. That model was shaken when markets froze during the financial crisis, prompting GE to put the business on firmer footing.”
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